


Nowhere Else to Turn

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [101]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Comfort, Domestic Avengers, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Reader-Insert, Stark Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25080331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: After quarantining with your parents for a while, they kick you out, and you have nowhere to turn but the gigantic building belonging to your dad’s boss.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [101]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 18
Kudos: 245





	Nowhere Else to Turn

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve gotten a little collection of requests from readers (anonymous and named alike) for lullabies in which the reader is traumatized by or recovering from a dysfunctional (at best) family life. In order to do those requests justice, I feel like I’ll need more space for characterization than the Lullabies typically allow, so there will be several other stories that have this reader in the Tower dealing with the fallout of having shitty parents. I’ll make sure to clearly label them when I post them, so you’ll know who she is.

“I can’t thank you enough, Tony.” You shifted a bit, readjusting the strap on the backpack you wore. It was weird to think about living here in the actual Avengers tower for the foreseeable future, but...here you were. Your ride had just dropped you off, and of course Tony was right there in front of the building to greet you. Along with...several of the Avengers. God, life was weird.

You’d known him forever. Your father had worked with Tony for most of his life now, so of course Tony had always been on the fringes of your life as you were growing up. You weren’t _close_ close—the man had way too many employees to be tight with every single family—but when your parents threw their latest fit and all of your friends in the city told you that their places were full up, you’d at least been able to turn to Tony. 

“Of course. Three people in that matchbox your folks call an apartment is inhumane. I’ve been telling your dad to find a bigger place for years.” He smiled wide at you and gestured for his companions to step forward. “Kid, this is Steve.”

Steve Rogers. Captain America. He stuck out his hand as though to shake yours, and you quickly wiped your palm on your pant leg, just in case. There was no way in hell that you were going to make him touch your clammy hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Rogers—or, uh...Captain America? Mr. Captain?” Great. You’d been here like a minute and already you were fucking things up.

“Steve.” He corrected you gently, and with a warm smile, even as his hand absolutely enfolded your own. “I’m glad you’re here.”

That was certainly overstating things a little. It really wasn’t the wisest thing to do, welcoming a stranger into your home during a pandemic, but you didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Captain—uh, Steve—ducked down a bit, then, to pick up the tubs that carried all your worldly possessions. Two plastic tubs and a backpack, and that was all you had right now. They’d given you less than an hour to pack up your shit, so there was maybe another tub worth of stuff still at “home”, but growing up in a tiny apartment with parents like yours, you’d never really collected a lot of stuff.

The redhead standing on the other side of Tony held up a device as though scanning you with it, and then studied the screen. Tony strained a bit to look over her shoulder. It was hard to be certain, but you figured it was some kind of fancy thermometer or something. After a few moments, she looked up at you again. “You seem healthy,” she said with a quick nod of her head. “Welcome.”

“That’s Natasha Romanoff,” Tony said. “And my new portable body scanner.”

Natasha did not put her hand out to shake yours, but...that was fine. Your attention was kind of drawn to the scanner, anyway. That seemed like it could be useful right now. You looked back at Tony. “Did you—”

He grinned again with a knowing look in his eyes, and nodded. “I finished it last week. It goes into mass-production in a few days. Maybe it can help restrict the spread of all this. Come on in, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

And...he did. At some point, Natasha slipped away, and you weren’t surprised when you noticed that she was missing. She was a deadly assassin, after all, so not only would she not have time to follow a random civilian around the Tower, but she was also pretty good at stealth. Steve accompanied the two of you up to the room that would be yours. Or...the _set_ of rooms that would be yours. You had a bedroom, a sitting room, and your own bathroom. Just these rooms alone were bigger than your parents’ whole apartment. You were so distracted by the sheer amount of space that you could only pay a little attention to Tony as he ran you through a long list of commands to navigate his AI program for the building. But maybe he could see that. He trailed off and smiled indulgently at you.

“I have a list written down somewhere. I’ll find it for you. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the common space.”

This place was insane. The kitchen was state-of-the-art. The living room was packed full with tech. And Earth’s Mightiest Heroes were just wandering around in the space like it was nothing. James Buchanan Barnes was in the kitchen when Tony tried showing you where everything was. It looked like he’d just come from the gym: his hair was pulled back out of his face and he was soaked with sweat. You did your absolute best not to stare. Tony slapped his shoulder and made some comment about keeping an eye on your makeup around this one, because he had a thing for eyeliner. Mr. Barnes’s face was a stormcloud. He met your eyes for only a moment before looking away again.

“I’m sorry,” you said quietly, almost despite yourself. That was one of your bad habits—apologizing—but this did feel like the kind of situation which required an apology. You were barging in on his home, and Tony was using him to make jokes, when it was clear that the man only wanted to disappear. His face grew tight, and his lips twitched like maybe he was thinking about smiling at you, but then he looked away. Tony did, finally, release him, and he slunk through the door.

After you’d been thoroughly briefed on the kitchen and the living room, Tony dragged you into the elevator. You wanted to protest. Why did you really need to know this kind of thing, when you mostly just planned on hiding in your gigantic set of rooms until the world settled down enough to let you find a new job so you could try to get your own matchbox of an apartment somewhere? But you held your tongue, unwilling to sound so ungrateful.

The elevator stopped, and Tony led you out into the middle of a gym that seemed to take up an entire floor of the Tower. As far as the eye could see, there were machines and weights and mats and a dizzying array of workout equipment that you couldn’t even recognize. Tony was rambling again, explaining what certain things did and assuring you that you were welcome to use this whenever you liked—or, if you’d prefer, you were also welcome to absolutely ignore it for as long as you stayed here. But something else was distracting you. The sound of a fight. It sounded like fists pummeling someone endlessly, punctuated with grunts and groans that made you a little queasy. 

Tony must have noticed. He guided you towards the sound with a hand on the small of your back. That was where Natasha had disappeared off to: she was attacking a hulking blond man. Now that you were closer, some of the tension eased in your body. The blond man was laughing. This wasn’t a real fight. Maybe they were just training. It seemed impossible to you, but Natasha knocked the blond man to the mat, and he finally noticed your presence. He tilted his head backwards to beam up at the two of you and, when she let him get up again, he rose back to his full height.

It was Thor. The God of Thunder. He stuck out his hand, and if you’d thought Steve’s hands were large…

“A new agent? It’s a pleasure to meet you!” The question was mostly directed at Tony, but you shook your head vigorously.

“No, it’s not like that,” you said, trying to smile despite the way your body was reacting to...just...the _hugeness_ of him. “I’m no one, just a stray. Just hiding out here for a while, until I can get my feet under me again.” You introduced yourself, and Thor folded your hand in both of his. You didn’t _really_ want people to know that your parents had kicked you out in the middle of a pandemic, so you held that little factoid back.

“I wouldn’t say you’re no one,” Tony said, a bit of disapproval creeping into his voice. “Her dad works for me, and, from what I’ve heard, she’s whip-smart too.” You grit your teeth, a little, at the thought of whatever else Tony might have heard, but allowed him to catch your gaze. “And that reminds me—I want you to work in the lab with me. Think of it as the cost of rent. Say, two days a week?”

You could have laughed at the sheer absurdity of this whole thing—there was no way that even two full days straight each week, eight full twenty-four hour days in Tony’s lab each month could add up to what he could make if he actually rented out your room. But maybe that was another perk of being obscenely rich: you didn’t have to worry about making more money. So...you nodded, and Tony winked at you.

Eventually you made it back to your room. The Tower was enormous. If you lived here for real, there would have been very little reason for you ever to set foot outside. And most of the other residents you’d met today were more like Steve and Thor than Natasha and Bucky: they were happy to see you and welcomed you into the Tower. Not that you blamed the others for being less than thrilled. If the roles were switched and _you_ were a superhero who suddenly had to share even a little bit of your enormous living space with some random nobody, you were pretty sure it would have been hard to greet them warmly. 

So you did your best to stay out of everybody’s way. If you weren’t in the lab with Tony or trying to make something to eat quickly and quietly in the kitchen, you mostly kept yourself hidden in your rooms. Your guilty, anxious brain kept you on edge a little, and told you that you were an inconvenience, a burden, an annoyance, but that wasn’t much different from the way things felt at your parents’ place, now, was it? At least here you could feel weird and bad about yourself in peace and quiet, and you didn’t have to worry about someone stomping down the hallway to yell at you for something.

Your presence sort of required a kind of balancing act. Some of the others—mostly Steve, Thor, and Wanda—kept inviting you out into common spaces to eat with the others, or to watch a movie, or to just hang out and drink with everyone else. Some small part of you jumped with glee at each invitation, but you did your best not to impose on the others every single time. One night, when Wanda had dragged you out into the living room with everybody else and then plied you with alcohol, you accidentally referred to Mr. Barnes as “Mr. Barnes”, and everybody else in the room had lost their minds with laughter. His cheeks had gone a little pink while he waited for everybody else to stop laughing, and then he’d given you an awkward smile and a nod.

“You can call me James. Or Bucky, if you want. I’m no ‘Mister’.”

When you lifted your glass towards him in an imaginary ‘cheers’ gesture, he’d done the same, and then stealthily pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt down over his metal hand.

Even Natasha started to warm to you. Over time, you came to realize that her cool demeanor on your first day in the Tower wasn’t about displeasure so much as it was about...caution. But Wanda kept spending time with you, and sometimes, Natasha would join the two of you. They’d crack jokes about the sheer amount of testosterone that flowed through the Tower on a day-to-day basis.

Slowly, you settled in. Your brain never let you forget how little you actually belonged there, but the others didn’t seem to mind. You started venturing out a little more often, but still mostly at night. The gym floor stayed open all the time, after all, and when you couldn’t sleep, there was always a treadmill. But things didn’t always get quite that dire. Most nights, when the silence in your rooms grew deafening, you were content to settle yourself onto a couch in the living room and read until your eyelids grew heavy. It was uncomfortable to realize just how normal the sounds in your parents’ place had become to you. When you were still living there, it had always stressed you out to hear the way they screamed at each other, but now the lack of it was making you uneasy? That always made you want to laugh at yourself, which you wouldn’t do when you were in a common space, for fear of waking someone up.

One night, insomnia was striking you especially hard. You’d already tried to tire yourself out in the gym, but by the time you got back to your room and took a quick shower, you were wide awake again. It was late enough—or early enough—that you told yourself you should just stay here, but your overactive mind was quick to latch on to the lack of sound in your rooms. So you gave in. You grabbed a book and walked quietly through the halls until you reached the living room.

But someone else was already there. A light was shining in the room, and someone was stretched out comfortably in one of the recliners. You froze just outside the doorway. It was Loki.

You had yet to encounter him in the Tower. He hadn’t been present at any of the group activities that someone had dragged you to. Thor mentioned once, sadly, that his brother did not often venture out of his own room here. And yet, here he was: sitting in the living room like it was no big deal, reading some thick tome which sat in his lap.

You’d lived in New York during the Battle. His face had dominated your television screen for ages: that dark hair, that sharp jawline. But back then, there’d been something else in his face, too: a wildness that was not here tonight. And there were other differences too. He’d looked lean and hungry and _mean_ when he was on the news, but the little that you could see of his body right now looked...stronger. His arms were a little thicker and more muscular, and his cheeks weren’t quite as sunken. This really only confirmed the uneasy suspicions that you’d had back then.

“Come in,” he called, not looking up from his book. “Or go away. Just stop lurking. I do not intend to attack your city again tonight, mortal.”

“No—I’m sorry, I know. Sorry.” Your feet carried you into the room before you could really make that choice for yourself. Everything inside you was screaming at you to take the seat farthest away from him, to keep from making him feel crowded or something, but you made yourself sit on the sofa nearest to his chair instead. He already thought you were gawking at him from the doorway; you didn’t want to give him any more reason to think that you were afraid of him. “I just didn’t know anyone else would be in here at this time of night. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you’ve said.” You told yourself that he didn’t sound annoyed, only thoughtful, and forced yourself to open your book. But it was hard to focus. It felt like you were hyper-aware of everything you were doing. Were you turning the pages too loudly? Breathing too loudly? You should have left him to whatever it was that he was doing. You stole a glance over at him to make sure he wasn’t getting increasingly irritated, but what you saw made you freeze.

He was already looking at you.

There was something about having the entirety of his focus on you that made it hard to breathe. It reminded you of the guilty thoughts you’d had Back Then. How you’d wanted to brush his hair for him and soothe the dark circles under his eyes. You wanted to look away, to try to keep him from seeing those thoughts on your face, but you couldn’t. So instead, you tried to smile at him.

“You look good,” you said, mostly on impulse. You felt your cheeks begin to warm immediately, but forced yourself onward. Maybe living in a Tower full of superheroes was doing something for your own courage. “Like...healthier. Stronger. I’m, um...glad.”

His face gave nothing away, though he did arch one perfect eyebrow at you. “Stronger than the time I rained down destruction on your city and sought to subjugate your world.”

Your courage wavered, then, and you lowered your eyes back to your book. But you made a noise of agreement. “You looked like you were kind of sick back then. I hope you’re feeling better now.” You definitely didn’t want to tell him that you’d felt bad for him back then. Sure, you were terrified. At the time, you were afraid of what he planned to do and what he’d already done. But some stupid part of you had pitied him. Maybe your real terror was reserved more for men like your father.

He didn’t respond for a long time. The words on the pages in front of you blurred, but you tried to run your eyes along the lines of text, anyway. Whatever you were reading right now, you were going to have to reread it the next time you picked up this book, because not a single word was sticking in your mind. Oh, well.

“So what’s your story, then?” He spoke as though he had suspicions. You would have preferred not to have heard him, but you looked up at him anyway. He narrowed his eyes. “A mortal who moves out of her family home in the middle of the greatest pandemic your people have known in generations. And who apologizes thrice for her existence in the span of mere moments. And who does not fear Loki of Asgard.”

You shrugged, a little uncomfortable under his scrutiny. He could stare at you all he wanted; he wasn’t going to get your full story. No one needed to know all of _that_. “I’m just...me.” You hesitated for a moment, then continued: “I can go, if you want. I didn’t mean to intrude, I just wanted to read somewhere that wasn’t my room.” You closed your book and uncrossed your legs, but before you could rise, he stilled you with a gesture of his hand.

“I want you to stay.” He looked almost...surprised at his own words. It was hard to imagine him spending much time with any of the others, but it was also hard to imagine him feeling lonely. _Was_ he lonely?

You stood up to resettle yourself among the cushions on the sofa, and told yourself that he was _not_ watching you out of the corner of his eye to make sure you weren’t going to leave. Only a few moments after you sat back down, he turned the page in his book with something of a dramatic flair. You tried not to smile. _Yes, Loki, I can clearly see that you’re enthralled in your book again._ You opened your own and redoubled your efforts to focus on what it was that you were reading. Nothing more was said between the two of you that night, but, from time to time, you could have sworn that you felt his eyes on you. You didn’t allow yourself to check. But you did let your mouth curl into a careful smile each time. Just in case.


End file.
